Ask the Architect

Want to save money? Do things right.

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Q. We just decided to add a second floor and already have problems. We can’t get a contractor to give us an estimate, we can’t find an architect who calls back and the couple we spoke with won’t use the plans we got from the previous owner. Are we just not talking to the right people? We know you’ll probably say we need the architect to make his own plans before a contractor, and we understand, but how can we save the money we need for the construction? It’s all very expensive.

A. If you really want to save money, do the right thing. Most people see all of the process as an avoidable pain. Picture them driving down the shoulder, passing the rest of us, who are in bumper-to-bumper traffic. When you see them stopped by a trooper, you may be satisfied because you stayed within a system, not outside it, and there are many ways for you to end up getting caught — poor workmanship, lack of good planning, repeating construction, having to file revised plans after the job gets stopped, all costing more.

You save money by doing quality design, known in the industry as “value engineering.” You save money by having accurate, permitted plans a contractor can realistically evaluate and give a knowledgeable price for. Every job that costs too little will cost more in the end. You just don’t know it until “shoulda, coulda, woulda" takes place. Hindsight is 20-20. (How many clichés apply here? Let me count.)

What I have seen is avoidable. People hand me a set of old plans to start with and wince when I tell them we still have to charge to measure. There’s a slim chance that plans accurately match the existing building. The first clue is when the room dimensions are all round numbers, without fractions. No reality there. Then we measure and see that the room is off by a measly ¾ of an inch. So what’s the big deal? Add the fractions that the measurements are off by across the house and the total will typically be four to six inches. Now the roof pitch is wrong, the structure is off from floor to floor and the legal survey document doesn’t match. Being off could mean the house is now too high, an expensive zoning height approval, the plumber can’t get a pipe through a misaligned steel beam … it all adds up.

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